Hydrocarbon fluids such as oil and natural gas are obtained from a subterranean geologic formation, referred to as a reservoir, by drilling a well that penetrates the hydrocarbon-bearing formation. Once a wellbore is drilled, various forms of well completion components may be installed in order to control and enhance the efficiency of producing the various fluids from the reservoir. Information from the wells can prove valuable, but reliably obtaining useful information from the well can be difficult.
One manner in which information can be obtained from a well is to use a distributed fiber optic sensing system, such as a distributed temperature sensing system or a distributed vibration or acoustic sensing system. Fiber optic sensors employ the fact that environmental effects, such as pressure, strain, vibration, and temperature, can alter the amplitude, phase, frequency, spectral content, or polarization of light propagated through an optical fiber. Advantages of fiber optic sensors include their light weight, small size, passive nature, energy efficiency, and ruggedness. In addition, fiber optic sensors have the potential for very high sensitivity, and wide bandwidth. Yet further, certain classes of sensors can be distributed along the length of an optical fiber so that an appropriate interrogation system can be employed to monitor selected environmental parameters at multiple locations at the same time. For instance, when deployed in a hydrocarbon well, a fiber optic sensor can provide indications of characteristics of production fluids, such as temperature, fluid composition, density, viscosity, flow rate, etc. Or the sensor can provide information indicative of the operational state of downhole components, such as by monitoring vibration in the region proximate the components. Yet further, the sensor can provide information about characteristics of the earth formation penetrated by the well, such as be monitoring microseismic events.